Chapter 504: The Fires of Retribution, Behind the Green Veil
The chilling air of the storm had not yet dissipated when a sound like giants hammering the heavens shattered the sky.
First, the soil turned a bruised, incandescent red. Then, the River Acheron—soaked with the blood of a million martyrs—began to boil and steam. It was the precursor to a volcanic eruption; crimson veins of energy spread through the gaps in the defensive lines, coiling like hungry serpents.
Then came the torrent of fire, a conical flood of white-hot destruction.
"WAAAGH!"
The charging greenskins vanished in an eyeblink. Dense photons enveloped them, heating the very atoms of their existence until they were reduced to drifting ash. Even their guttural screams were consumed by the roar of the beams.
To the naked mortal eye, it looked like a static ribbon of solid light, a scar across reality.
Time itself seemed to freeze.
BOOM!
The first explosion thundered at the edge of the horizon. The primary Ordinatus Oberon engine, overloaded by the discharge, was winched back into its maintenance sleeve. The opening salvo of the counter-offensive was over.
The enemy was simply gone. Beneath the flight path of the Aeronautica wings, Imperial Guard squads surged across bridgeheads and along the jagged rims of deep craters. Armored wedges, led by elite shock-cadres, punched through the scorched earth, driving west into the heart of the Armageddon sub-continent.
Then came the bombardment from the heavens.
Counter-batteries erupted from the gun-decks of the orbital spaceports. Dense curtains of fire rained down into the Ork trenches.
From the cockpit of a Valkyrie, it looked like golden flowers blooming in a sequence, a necklace of fire stretching to the horizon, erasing everything within its grasp.
But the air wings could not afford to linger on the spectacle.
Flight-Lead Alexos Perysh knew this transient majesty did not belong to them. They had to breach the perimeter. He cast one last glance at the titanous silhouette of the Hive City behind him, then banked his wing into a steep climb, leaving the carpet of fire in his wake.
This was not their war. Theirs lay in the enemy's rear, beyond the line of sight.
The shriek of the turbines gradually drowned out the thunder of the artillery. Alexos pushed his wing forward with a soaring spirit. Masked by the heavy cloud cover, the formation crossed the Acheron and the primary greenskin battle-line, flying over the seabed—now a parched wasteland of salt and steam, the waters having been evaporated by tectonic upheaval and the fires of a thousand lances.
HUMMM—
His internal auspex chimed. He adjusted his visual feed and spotted a cluster of Ork "Fighta-Bommas" screaming toward them.
"BRACE FOR IMPACT!" Alexos bellowed into the vox.
The Valkyrie Assault Carrier was a masterwork of aeronautic engineering. While the paratroopers in the bay were still straining their ears to identify the vector of the threat, Alexos had already locked them in.
He cut the throttle, executed a violent corkscrew maneuver to evade the incoming tracers, and then pulled up. The Valkyrie spat a pair of air-to-air missiles, turning an Ork craft into a tumbling torch at point-blank range.
But Alexos felt no joy in the kill.
He pushed the nose down, leading his wing out of the clouds.
The moment they emerged from the grey shroud, the sky turned into a web of flak.
Alexos executed a high-G bank, nearly throwing a young recruit out of the bay. The trooper's safety harness held, though his plate slammed hard against the bulkhead.
Behind him, Flight-Four attempted to mirror the maneuver. A second later, an Ork Stormboy—strapped to a rocket of pure madness—slammed directly into the hull. The Valkyrie disintegrated in a violent fireball.
Above were the swarming Fightas and the suicidal Stormboyz; below was a spiderweb of anti-air fire.
The greenskins cared nothing for their own losses. They were drunk on the thrill of watching the Imperial "Sky-Birds" burst into flames as they descended.
Even with the newest Aegis-Pattern displacement shields, Alexos knew they were on a timer.
He dropped the altitude further, utilizing his skill to weave between the jagged, skeletal remains of ruined hive-spires to find a second of cover.
The pilots of Flight-Five and beyond gritted their teeth and followed their lead, abandoning the stricken Flight-Four and diving after Alexos.
The enemy fire concentrated on the stragglers.
Inside the bay of Flight-Four, the paratroopers were veterans. Seeing the craft was doomed, they threw the hatches open and engaged their grav-chutes at five thousand meters, leaving the pilot to his fate.
Three were shredded by flak before they had fallen a hundred meters. The shields of the dying Valkyrie flickered out as a "Deff-Kopta" with a spinning saw-blade sliced through the cockpit.
Alexos caught a glimpse of the five survivors in his peripheral vision. Their landing zone was favorable—a sector where the greenskin density was low.
They might live, he thought. If they can find their feet before the Nobz arrive.
"ALL CREWS! ALL CREWS!" Alexos keyed the wide-band broadcast, marking the drop zone on the tactical grid.
"THIS IS ALEXOS! PREPARE FOR DEPLOYMENT! GO! GO! GO!"
He led the wing in a spiraling descent, the Valkyries' hulls screaming as they brushed against the very slopes of the mountains.
The Imperial Aeronautica was built for this. While a standard atmospheric craft might require a wide turning radius, these birds—blessed by the "Prime Motive"—could fly ten meters off the deck, providing precision fire while executing maneuvers that challenged the laws of physics. The only bottleneck was the endurance of the human pilot.
The Valkyries cut through the mountain passes, dropping a thousand meters in a single second.
The co-pilot clutched his eyes, fighting to keep them from bursting under the pressure.
CRASH!
The ventral hatches of the Valkyries snapped open. A hurricane of soot-filled air roared into the bays.
"JUMP! JUMP!"
Sergeant Karoline Guttere hauled a terrified neophyte from the floor. She verified his harness was locked, then kicked him into the void. The rest followed in rapid succession. Once the crates of munitions and mobile barricades were shoveled out after them, Karoline threw herself into the sky.
Her grav-chute engaged, snapping her into the murky atmosphere. She gripped the tethers of a supply crate, steering her descent toward the gathering signal of her squad.
THUNDER—
Another wing of Fightas was closing in.
Seeing the troopers and materiel away, Alexos signaled for a maximal-thrust maneuver, leading the Ork pursuit away from the drop zone.
THUD.
The weight hit the ground.
"THIS IS ONE-LEAD! ALL UNITS REPORT!"
Karoline parried the clumsy swipe of a Gretchin that had been lurking in the rubble. She extended her arm and crushed the creature's skull with a single armored fist. Pulling her boot from the corpse of an Ork, she unlatched her grav-chute and keyed her vox.
"ALL PARATROOPERS IN SECTOR, CONVERGE ON MY SIGNAL!"
Responses crackled through the comms. Nearby, the young recruit she had first deployed waved a hand from behind a jagged trench-lip.
CLATTER.
A trio of troopers, their helms marked with the numeral '3', scrambled toward her position.
They were missing two men. Only three remained.
They were short a combat engineer, but the survivors—save for the leader—were Extirpator-Specials, carrying enough firepower to level a hab-block.
The drop-corps hierarchy was standardized: a Sergeant, a Duel-Champion, two Nulls (Blanks), two Engineers, three Extirpators, and five standard infantry.
The Extirpators were the "Mortal Astartes"—armed with volkite chargers and radiation-emitters.
"THIS IS FOUR! REQUESTING ENTRY!"
"GRANTED!"
Karoline drew her combat-blade, shearing through the arm of an Ork hidden in the wreckage. Using her power-plate's strength, she tripped the beast and drove the blade through its primary brain.
CRACK!
She hurled the body into the open. The squad's Extirpator instantly ignited it with a burst of phosphor, creating a wall of chemical fire at the perimeter.
The wall of flame forced a charging Ork mob to veer away, seeking a less painful path.
"THIS IS FIVE! INBOUND!"
"GRANTED!"
Karoline directed her remaining engineer to deploy the multi-layered adamantium defense-screens. They dug into the earth, anchoring the structures while setting up the Volcano-Lances—weapons powered by specialized crystals capable of continuous fire.
As Karoline and her veterans stabilized the "Hole," more paratroopers who had punched through the greenskin blockade began to converge on the bastion.
They worked with feverish intensity, assembling the heavy gear. These energy-based weapons were far more portable than their kinetic counterparts, allowing a small crew to manifest a terrifying volume of fire.
And that fire was a magnet for every Ork in the sector.
Their purpose was clear: to act as a series of "sinks" in the battlefield—small, violent holes in the terrain that would draw the emerald tide toward them, bleeding the Waaagh! and relieving the pressure on the primary armored thrust.
As for the true centers of the Ork command—the Mega-Armor Warbosses—they were the targets of a much more specialized cadre.
"WAAAAAGH!!!"
Massive Stormbirds, far larger than the Valkyries, lanced through the sky. They drove straight into the heart of the anti-air batteries with a savage, predatory grace. The horizon erupted with flashes of green energy as the Orks roared in pain and fury.
Fortunately, those selected for the drop-corps were men and women of unbreakable spirit. They worked amidst the screams, deploying adamantium skeletons into the earth. Hydraulic presses drove the anchors ten meters into the bedrock before liquid metal was pumped into the gaps.
The metal solidified into a hardened grid beneath the ground, a counter to the Orks' subterranean tunnel-raids.
What if they bring something unconventional? one trooper wondered.
Then we die, was the silent answer. If we draw enough heat to trade one life for a dozen Nobz, the Emperor wins.
BOOM!!!
As the bastion was being fortified, a crude Ork missile slammed into the defense-grid.
"CONTACT! CONTACT!"
Karoline looked up from beneath the glowing red heat-shrouds of the screens.
The smoke began to clear.
The veil was lifted. They saw the enemy.
Deep within the thinning haze, a massive green silhouette was emerging.
It was a mob of Orks, thousands strong. They were spreading out, marching with a steady, rhythmic pace. The paratroopers could smell the fanaticism, the bestial hunger for slaughter.
The Orks were roaring, laughing, their bodies scarred from their own internal squabbles. But now, they had found a proper fight.
Scrapping with the Big-Teeth is fine, but krumping these Humie-Cans? That's a real Waaagh!
Karoline raised her hand.
There was no need for complex orders. The line of elite paratroopers was a single organism.
The Orks began to accelerate. A walk. A trot. A skip. And finally, the full-tilt charge, heavy boots splashing through the mud, the earth itself trembling under their weight.
Shields braced. Swords raised. Heads low. Weapons locked.
At one kilometer, the Imperial line opened fire.
Bolters thundered. Volkite beams hissed, turning the air into a shimmering heat-haze. Muzzle flashes glowed a dull, angry red. The front rank of the greenskins was pulverized—some tumbled, some were vaporized, some were simply punched through. Shattered scrap-armor flew through the air; ash, ichor, and meat-slurry painted the ground.
The Orks returned fire. Their "Scrap-Weapons" and psychic-attuned guns barked and roared—
And then fell silent.
Karoline glanced back. A burst of fire from her weapon claimed a Nob's life, scattering the Gretchin cowering at its feet. The runts were trampled into the dirt by the tide behind them.
She looked at the Nulls integrated into her squad. She swore she would never harbor a prejudice against their kind again.
During the War of the Beast, the Silent Sisterhood had proven their worth against the greenskins. Pity that the shameful records of that era had been sealed by the High Lords. Few knew that a single Beast had once forced a Primarch into a suicide pact.
The Orks charged without fear of death. Occasionally, a trooper beside Karoline fell—some killed instantly, others knocked flat by the kinetic impact of Ork slugs against their storm-shields.
The green tide filled her entire world. The defenders didn't even need to aim. They simply pulled the triggers and watched the meat evaporate.
The Orks reached ten meters from the bastion.
Another ten meters, and the hundred-man squad would be submerged.
But there was no gap left to close. The Imperial line charged.
The collision was a symphony of metal—ceramite meeting scrap-iron. The sound was like a thousand hammers striking an anvil. Even the engineers digging the secondary trenches could hear the savage groan of the impact.
There were no Mega-Nobz here. No Weirdboyz.
The paratroopers, carrying the momentum of their own counter-thrust, shattered the Ork vanguard. They kicked the towering xenos into the trenches, treading them down and finishing them with monomolecular blades and point-blank shots. They used the corpses as a buffer to tangle the feet of the mobs behind them.
At the center of the shield-wall stood Karoline, a massive half-Catachan trooper, and the agile youth from Hades. They were a Trinity of slaughter, the unbreakable surface of the eastern line.
Karoline was a vision of filth. Gun in one hand, short-blade in the other, she stood like a jagged rock in a green sea.
Before the lines met, her volkite charger—a weapon she called "The Lady" due to its temperamental maintenance—had claimed eighty-eight lives. She held it like a spear, its tip spitting ribbons of scarlet light.
In the melee, she was a duelist. She leaned away from a crude axe-swing and drove her shoulder into the Ork's chest. Her monomolecular blade descended; the polished scrap-plate of the beast shattered like porcelain. The helm imploded. The corpse was kicked into the wet air.
Seconds later, her "Chief" pattern armor was coated in the blood she had spilled. The crude blades swinging for her neck were parried by her transhuman reflexes and the power of the suit.
The half-Catachan swung a power-claymore, a whirlwind of steel that reduced everything in its path to mulch. He roared a war-song from his savage home, his strength increasing with every decapitation.
The youth from Hades coordinated the fire-grid. The heavy energy weapons in the rear were protected, drawing power from their cells to vaporize the Orks being channeled toward them.
The Extirpators, armed with rad-guns and phosphex, wove curtains of lethal energy in the enemy's rear, cauterizing the piles of dead to prevent the Orks from using the corpses as ramps to scale the bastion.
The iron line of the paratroopers held. The greenskins were caught in a vortex of their own making, trampling their own runts in their desperation to reach the meat.
But the price was paid in human blood. One by one, the warriors in dented, buckled plate began to fall.
The mud turned into a carpet of flesh. The air was a soup of iron, smoke, and blinding light. The slaughter was slowly being swallowed by the soot.
The roar of the guns became a muffled thud. The clashing of blades sounded hollow.
To every warrior on that line, the world had shrunk. They were trapped in a stagnant, silent box, where the only sounds were the rasping of their own breath inside their helms, the whine of the servos, and the rhythmic thump-thump-thump of bullets hitting their plate.
But it mattered not.
They were the elite of the Astra Militarum. They were the steel forged from the resources of a billion souls.
They carried the expectations of the galaxy. The command of the Regent. The smiths who had forged their guns. The citizens of the Hives who waited in terror for the outcome. And—
The Primarchs.
Their corps had been born from the Great Reform. They were designed to mirror the glory of the Kasrkin, armored in steel and faith. They were the proof that even as mortals, they could stand against the Beast.
Eighty-eight. Eight hundred and eighty-eight. Eight thousand eight hundred and eighty...
The numbers were lost to the carnage. The ash of the dead piled higher and higher. The defenders began to mirror the madness of their foes, fighting with the same wild, laughing abandon.
"WAAAA—"
After an eternity of slaughter, a final, harrowing roar thundered from the heavens. Karoline felt the pressure around her evaporate. The green tide simply vanished.
Then came the flash.
It wasn't the strobe of a gun. It was a broad, blinding radiance that burned away the smoke and illuminated the entire kill-zone.
The emerald shroud that had choked her vision was gone.
Karoline heard a sharp, metallic scratching.
Ash was being whipped up by a sudden gale, falling on them like grey rain. It tapped against her armor, ringing like a thousand tiny bells as it settled on the dead.
She flicked her blade, finishing a Nob in scrap-plate. As the beast fell, she retreated, allowing the Extirpators to ignite the remains. She looked up at the sky.
The sudden thermal shift had caused "dirty ice" to form on her faceplate. It shattered into dust under the impact of the falling ash. The low clouds were churning with a faint, persistent glow. The green was fading from the world.
Silence reclaimed the field.
The steel-scrub, reduced to charred fibers by the explosions, swayed in the wind. The dust roiled.
She turned back.
Her warriors were gasping for air.
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